Awareness Week 2025 - Risk and Resilience: Understanding Vulnerabilities and Pathways to Exploitation
Please join the Quinnipiac University School of Law Human Trafficking Prevention Project—along with the Connecticut Bar Association and the Connecticut Bar Foundation—for our Awareness Week 2025 panel: “Risk and Resilience: Understanding Vulnerabilities and Pathways to Exploitation.”
Traffickers prey on vulnerabilities—whether it be poverty, immigration status, criminal involvement, lack of resources such as health care, or a combination of these. But understanding what makes people vulnerable is not just about recognizing risks—it’s about identifying how we, as a society, can help alleviate those vulnerabilities, strengthen resilience, and create pathways for safety and equity in vulnerable communities.
This panel brings together diverse voices to expand the conversation beyond human trafficking to excavate the broader systemic disadvantages that leave individuals susceptible to various forms of harm, inequity, exploitation, and, ultimately, trafficking. Through their expertise—whether it be advocacy, research, or lived experience—our panelists will provide a more holistic understanding of how certain populations—such as people of color, men and boys, and undocumented individuals—are disproportionately disadvantaged. By focusing on root causes, the conversation will also explore practical solutions to mitigate these risks, emphasizing the need for proactive efforts to confront systemic disadvantages that enable exploitation.
Our panel, which features attorneys and advocates and those with lived experience, includes:
• Moderator: Heather Mansfield, Executive Chair, Quinnipiac Law’s Human Trafficking Prevention Project.
• Nathan Earl, Principal, Giantslayer; Project Co-Director, Men's Haven Health Initiative.
• Luis Luna, community organizer; radio producer; artist (formerly of HUSKY 4 Immigrants).
• Luca Rodriguez, Quinnipiac Law School Second-Year Student & DACA recipient.
• Daphney Louissiant, Survivor.
• Yvette Young, Associate Vice President of Training and Advocacy, The Village.
This is a free event. Zoom info will be sent upon registration. Please submit anonymous questions for the panel here.
Attorneys admitted in Connecticut may claim up to two (2) CLE hours for attending this event.
